Furthermore: Nov. 1, 1993

Edith Wharton is enjoying a hot season, 56 years after her death, that would be the envy of many a living novelist. Buoyed by Martin Scorsese's film, The Age of Innocence is the No. 1 paperback best seller. Sales of other Wharton titles have doubled, and three have been snapped up for possible films. As if | Wharton didn't write enough, her last, unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, has been completed (and, alas, flattened and sentimentalized) by scholar Marion Mainwaring (Viking; $22). It too has been optioned by Hollywood.